PAstor's Blog

Sociologist Dr. Tony Campolo, long a popular speaker at Christian youth and social-action events, has recently declared himself not an evangelical (see Shane Vander Hart's recent column at https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2016/09/three-reasons-i-agree-with-tony-campolo-that-he-isnt-an-evangelical/).

But EFCA pastors back in 1985 knew he wasn't an evangelical, which is why they (successfully) petitioned Bill Bright to drop him as a speaker from a Campus Crusade conference. Campolo slandered those pastors by calling them "McCarthyites." But all they had done was read the record of Campolo's own written and spoken words.

There is an old essay about Campolo available (2010), which tracks the left-wing / mystical / universalistic doctrines Campolo has been preaching, back to the mid 1980s. The essay is somewhat crudely written, but it becomes more useful as it moves along, because it increasingly quotes from Campolo's own books, essays, and public statements. http://www.letusreason.org/popteac27.htm

Dr. Campolo is an old man now, but his approach to religion -- blending mysticism, Eastern thought, and Marxism into Christian words while replacing their meaning -- his approach has been around a long time. 2,000 years ago Paul warned about it, in Colossians 2:8. What is strange to me is how Christian leaders who should have known better talked themselves into believing that Dr. Campolo didn't really mean what he said he meant. Even though he has not been an evangelical for a long time, Dr. Campolo always said openly what he really meant, or at least what he was trying to say. It's our fault if we don't treat writers like him seriously.